Adoption,personality disorder and parental guilt: Implications of genetic research for social work

Few adoptive parents are aware that serious behavioral and personality problems can occur in adopted children. When such problems are manifested, parents are often guilt-ridden, believing that they are to blame. Recent research suggests that the risks associated with adoption may be genetically linked. Social workers who counsel adoptive parents need to be aware of potential problems, explain possible risks to them, and use these research findings to positive effect.     

Self-reports of information seeking: Is social desirability in play?

Social desirability, the likelihood of individuals to overreport behaviors they perceive to be approved by others, is often cited as a limitation in research but rarely controlled in a systematic manner. Social desirability can influence self-reported behaviors (e.g., voting behavior) and communication variables (e.g., argumentativeness). Information seeking may be susceptible to the effects of social desirability as knowledge and information are generally desired, and thus may be prone to overreporting. This article presents results from two online, information-seeking tracking studies investigating the influence of social desirability on self-reported information seeking. Participants indicated how much time they actually spent seeking information on a website. Unbeknownst to participants, their website use was being tracked using Google Analytics. This article compares actual time spent seeking information to reported information-seeking time. Results suggest that participants overreport information seeking in these two studies; social desirability may explain this result.     

Social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country: The effect of gender on access to and requests for resources

This paper addresses gender differences in the social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country. Social networks are often an important asset for accessing resources; however, they may also be a liability in developing countries, since entrepreneurs are often expected to support their contacts. Using a recent survey among urban and rural Ugandan entrepreneurs, we focus on the financial resources that entrepreneurs can obtain from their contacts on the one hand, and requests for financial support made to the entrepreneurs from these contacts on the other hand. Our results show that there are gender differences associated with access to, and requests for, financial resources.     

THE INFLUENCE OF CLASS POSITION ON THE FORMAL AND INFORMAL SANCTIONING OF WHITE-COLLAR OFFENDERS

Although researchers have investigated formal legal reactions to white-collar crime, few data exist on informal reactions to white-collar lawbreakers and how these reactions influence sentencing decisions. Even so, commentators often assert that whitecollar offenders receive lenient criminal penalties because judges sympathize with such offenders due to the losses they incur through informal sanctions. In this light, a causal model is used to explore the influence of class position on an important informal sanction—loss of job—and the influence of loss of job on sentence severity. Class position is found to determine the likelihood of loss of job but not that of incarceration. Further, offenders who commit large-scale offenses are less likely to suffer loss of job than those who commit small-scale crimes. Social reactions to white-collar crime are inconsistent, and class position more strongly influences informal, nongovernmental social control than social control through law.     

The Social Worker's Role in Serving Vulnerable Athletes

Athletes are a population group with unique vulnerabilities whose social work-related needs are often not met. Because of the perception that they are young and healthy, athletes are seen as free from mental health challenges and social problems. Yet athletes are at high risk for distress due to pressures to perform, avoid showing pain, hide physical injuries and substance abuse problems, eating disorders and burnout. At the same time, they may have false support systems that are interested in the athlete for social or monetary status. Social workers are broad systems practitioners who can focus on how the environment and other influences affect an athlete's mental health and well-being. Because social workers are strengths-based, they can assist athletes in achieving their highest level of functioning on and off the playing field.     

On toleration in social work

Toleration is one of many responses towards diversity and difference. With the growing diversity, the theme of toleration has often taken centre stage in discussions of multiculturalism and social pluralism. Nonetheless, it has not received much attention in the social work profession. Social workers often encounter situations in which they face a choice between tolerating and not tolerating. We argue that toleration is a legitimate and relevant topic in social work discourse. To make this point, first, this paper discusses different conceptions of toleration. Then, it demonstrates its relevance to social work and explores a potential benefit of including the idea of toleration in social work discourse. Social work codes of ethics implicitly support toleration, or at least respect-toleration and esteem-toleration. Incorporating toleration in social work discourse may help social workers to better cope with or reduce ethical stress and disjuncture.     

Networks containing negative ties

Social network analysts have often collected data on negative relations such as dislike, avoidance, and conflict. Most often, the ties are analyzed in such a way that the fact that they are negative is of no consequence. For example, they have often been used in blockmodeling analyses where many different kinds of ties are used together and all ties are treated the same, regardless of meaning. However, sometimes we may wish to apply other network analysis concepts, such as centrality or cohesive subgroups. The question arises whether all extant techniques are applicable to negative tie data. In this paper, we consider in a systematic way which standard techniques are applicable to negative ties and what changes in interpretation have to be made because of the nature of the ties. We also introduce some new techniques specifically designed for negative ties. Finally we show how one of these techniques for centrality can be extended to networks with both positive and negative ties to give a new centrality measure (PN centrality) that is applicable to directed valued data with both positive and negative ties.     

Self-reported ageism in students and academic staff—the case of the Social Work Department in Crete,Greece

This study focuses on self-reported ageism among social work students and academic staff in the Social Work Department of Crete, Greece; the 20-item questionnaire Relating to Older People Evaluation (ROPE) was used to measure negative and positive ageist behaviours that respondents engage in during everyday life. Positive ways of relating to old people were reported much more often than the negative ways; no significant differences in mean endorsement scores between academic staff and undergraduate students in either the positive or the negative dimensions were found. Women endorsed positive ageism items more often than men did, but the two genders did not differ in their endorsement of negative ageism items. This association was observed both for the students and academic staff. For students, no relationship between how many years they had spent studying and endorsement score was observed for either the positive or the negative behaviour items. Social work students and academic staff should be aware that positive ageism may turn into paternalism; it is important that social work education prepares students in order to approach clients with a non-prejudiced attitude and to provide them with quality services.     

Soziales Lernen – Angewandte Sozialpsychologie für Lernende und Lehrende in Schule und Universität

In this paper, two interdigitated current training projects will be presented. The presentation is to show that social psychological theories can be applied profitably for school development. The content is about social learning in school. Social learning is aimed at the acquisition of social and emotional skills. These skills are positively correlated with the cognitive development of students. Social skills need to be explicitly taught and practiced, especially if they were developed insufficiently in childhood. In the project Social Learning we examine what contents may include social learning. In the project Classroom Management we explore how these contents are best taught and this teaching can be taught. Insights of Social Psychology are introduced for each resulting different extracts of reality and their uses are discussed.     

Interprofessional Education for Practice: Some Implications for Australian Social Work

Abstract

Social workers work with many other professionals in the workplace and being able to work in a team is both a practice standard for professions and a desirable graduate attribute of most universities. However, student learning about teamwork is often inconsistent and serendipitous, albeit some attention may be given to it as part of field education and work preparation. Students and new graduate social workers usually adopt the teamwork approach that prevails in the agency in which they work and teamwork behaviour is often a result of socialisation and acculturation. Internationally, over the last two decades, interprofessional education for interprofessional practice has achieved prominence in social work curricula. This article covers recent Australian initiatives in interprofessional education and the involvement of the social work program at a leading Australian university in an interprofessional education project. Implications for social work student education and social work practice are discussed.     

Enhancing Social Work Practice with Ethnic Minority Youth

Social workers have the task of addressing issues that are unique to ethnic minority youth in clinical practice; however, they may be ill equipped to begin practice with these youth due to a lack of specificity within generalist curricula. Using African-American youth as an example, the paper provides evidence that there are critical areas of development and functioning that diverge from the generalist perspective. Social workers are provided with strategies to fill gaps in their knowledge of ethnic-minority youth to enhance their direct practice with this population.     

Exploring Infant Gesture and Joint Attention as Related Constructs and as Predictors of Later Language

In infancy, use of gesture and the ability to engage in joint attention with others both predict later language development. Conceptually, gesture and joint attention abilities may reflect a similar underlying social‐communicative skill. However, these abilities are often studied separately. Despite the fact that gesture is often used in episodes of joint attention, little is known about the degree to which measures of gesture use and joint attention ability are associated with one another or how they similarly, or differentially, predict children's language abilities. Participants in this study were 53 infants. At 12 months, multiple measures of infants’ gesture use were gleaned from a free–play interaction with a parent. Infants’ responding to and initiating joint attention were measured via the Early Social‐Communicative Scales (Mundy et al., 2003). Infants’ expressive and receptive language was measured at 24 months with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (Mullen, 1995). A factor analysis including gesture and joint attention measures indicated that at 12 months, joint attention, particularly responding to joint attention, reflects a similar underlying construct with infant gesture use, yet they uniquely predict later language ability.     

I do not believe you: how providing a source corrects health misperceptions across social media platforms

Social media are often criticized as serving as a source of misinformation, but in this study we examine how they may also function to correct misperceptions on an emerging health issue. We use an experimental design to consider social correction that occurs via peers, testing both the type of correction (i.e., whether a source is provided or not) and the platform on which the correction ocratcurs (i.e., Facebook versus Twitter). Our results suggest that a source is necessary to correct misperceptions about the causes of the Zika virus on both Facebook and Twitter, but the mechanism by which such correction occurs differs across platforms. Implications for successful social media campaigns to address health misinformation are addressed.     

Character work in social movements

Social movements carry out extensive character work, trying to define not only their own reputations but those of other major players in their strategic arenas. Victims, villains, and heroes form the essential triad of character work, suggesting not only likely plots but also the emotions that audiences are supposed to feel for various players. Characters have been overlooked in cultural analysis, possibly because they often take visual, non-narrative forms. By focusing on characters within movements, we illuminate some cultural dilemmas that both organizers and their opponents face as they try to influence players’ reputations.     

What Lies Beneath: Trauma Events,PTSD, and Alcohol Misuse in Driving Under the Influence Program Clients

The prevention and reduction of alcohol misuse is one of the Grand Challenges of Social Work. Addressing client needs beyond alcohol misuse can improve client outcomes. Driving under the influence program clients (N = 1,248) were screened for trauma events and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Results found that males more often reported having been assaulted with a weapon or that they caused injury to someone else. Females more often reported sexual assault and other unwanted sexual experience. About 26% overall screened positive for PTSD. Social workers need to be alert to various types of trauma and help clients identify the connection between trauma and alcohol misuse.     

Ready for Qualified Practice? A Comparative Study of Capability for Critical Reflection and Analysis of MA Social Work and MA Step Up to Social Work Students at the End of Second Placement

Social Work education is faced with substantial changes. New programmes like Step Up to Social Work have emerged and were evaluated in relation to intake, programme development and subjective student experiences. The lack of evidence on outcomes of such programmes was addressed in this study. In a comparative study of a MA in Social Work and a MA in Step Up to Social Work, the authors analysed students' capability to critically reflect on and analyse social work practice scenarios at the end of their final placement at one university. The PCF domain ‘Critical Reflection and Analysis’ was operationalised and the study design employed qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Demographic data, academic marks achieved during social work education and written reflections on case vignettes from the two programmes were analysed statistically. The findings suggest that, while there are some differences in outcomes between the programmes, they are not statistically significant. However, reflections on children and family vignettes were significantly better (U = 185, p = 0.008). Thematic analysis revealed considerable variation in the levels of curiosity and critical thinking and those respondents who framed their answers with reference to policy guidance, theory and research often extended their critical thinking.     

AS A YOUNG CHILD’S PARENT DIES: CONCEPTUALIZING AND CONSTRUCTING PREVENTIVE INTERVENTIONS

The impending death of a parent with young children in the home presents a family with often overwhelming challenges. Social workers and other mental health professionals are in a position to assist such families if they understand the misperceptions, beliefs and veiled presentation of affect in children. The framing of proposed interventions in cognitive, affective and behavioral spheres will be discussed. Parent guidance, critical to the overall success of the intervention, is presented along with many clinical examples and vignettes.     

Creative Solutions and Development for Social Workers Treating People with Serious Mental Illness - Contributions from Supervision

Social workers who are engaged in a therapeutic work with clients who have serious mental illness often face specific challenges and find themselves in crisis states in therapy, which stem from the return of the clients’ symptoms and their cognitive impairments as well as social stigma. These crisis states cause dramatic changes in the way social workers mentalize their clients and they are propelled to draw from covert, unformulated, and dissociated knowledge that they have about the client’s experience, which contributes to achieving new, surprising, and creative ways to mentalize the client. Such crisis resolutions enhance therapists’ personal and professional development and serve as an identification model for their clients.     

Three-dimensional virtual reality: Applications to the 12 grand challenges of social work

Abstract

The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW) identified 12 Grand Challenges of Social Work to unify the profession with focused research, practice and policy applications for the most pressing social issues. Virtual Reality (VR), specifically three-dimensional immersive computer-generated environments, has a history of research and applications to address social and behavioral problems. VR is becoming more readily available, as the technology is becoming more common in mainstream platforms such as mobile technology. While social work interventions are often tailored for vulnerable populations that may not have access to VR computing, it appears that virtual reality is gaining accessibility with these advances. Within the framework of the 12 Grand Challenges of Social Work, researchers from three social work virtual reality laboratories in the United States, Texas State University, the University of Houston, and the University of Alabama, review applications previously tested and currently in development to focus future research and intervention in social work practice.     

The effects of the Chilean divorce law on women’s first birth decisions

In 2004 a new law in Chile allowed couples to divorce for the first time. The law also established compensation in case of divorce where one spouse sacrifices professional development or advancement for the good of the household. Using birth histories constructed from the Chilean Social Security Survey (Encuesta de Prevision Social–EPS) Panel 2002–2009, we investigate the effect of the divorce law on a woman’s decision of when to have a first child. We find that the divorce law increases the hazard rate of having the first child by 61 % for more educated women, controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, length of marriage and the negative trend in fertility rates observed in Chile since the mid-1960s. We also find that a given percentage increase in a woman’s potential income will increase the hazard rate by a greater percentage increase after the passage of the law.